Quotes to inspire and reflect

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.

The sentiments of an adult are compounded of a kernal of instinct surrounded by a vast husk of education.

To reign by opinion, begin by trampling it under your feet.

One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic.

To observations which ourselves we make, / We grow more partial for th’ observer’s sake.

In the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.

Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure.

It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men’s opinions than to bring them over to ours.

An opinion, though it is original, does not necessarily differ from the accepted opinion; the important thing is that it does not try to conform to it.

If all men saw the fair and wise the same / men would not have debaters’ double strife.

We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, / By reiteration chiefly.

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally.

An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.

Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know.

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! And without too many regrets, if possible! Those from which the sap has withdrawn. But, good Lord, what beautiful colors!

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child.

If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.

Nobody loves life like an old man.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield.

Last scene of all, / That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

What [Time] hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

What does long life avail? The best seats at the funerals of friends.

No one's so old that he mayn’t with decency hope for one more day.

Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost.

Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable; precisely the balance and wisdom that comes from long perspectives and broad foundations.

Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.

The old men know when an old man dies.

Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied with want of perception, ignorance, and a facility of being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us?

Senescence begins / And middle age ends / The day your descendents / Out-number your friends.

Here’s a song was never sung: / Growing old is dying young.

Wiser in relish, if sedate, / Come graybeards to their roses late.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure.

The brief span of our poor unhappy life to its final hour / Is hastening on; and while we drink and call for gay wreaths, / Perfumes, and young girls, old age creeps upon us, unperceived.

Our years / Glide silently away. No tears, / No loving orisons repair / The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair/That drop forgotten to the tomb.

Age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible.

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.

It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, any more than they grow stronger or healthier or honester.

As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes vivid. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence.

Unto each man comes a day when his favorite sins all forsake him, / And he complacently thinks he has forsaken his sins.

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

Time goes by: reputation increases, ability declines.